BGMS Updates:

Dr. Steven Hughes on Think! with Krys Boyd 

40th Anniversary: An Interview with BGMS Founder, Barbara Gordon 

Greetings from the BGMS Board of Trustees! 

Get to know the Trustees of The Barbara Gordon Montessori School by clicking above on "About BGMS," then "Our Board."  Then consider joining the Trustees in the work they do to support our School by volunteering to serve on a Board Committee!  Committees looking for new members include Buildings and Grounds, Communications, Strategic Planning, and Capital Funding and Development.

Montessori Research Page: Interested in some of the research being done about Montessori?

Montessori Links:

Lillard, A.S., "Preschool children's development in classic Montessori, supplemented Montessori, and conventional programs."  Journal of School Psychology 50:379-401 (June 2012)

A study examining the impact of Montessori implementation fidelity found that children enrolled in high fidelity classic (AMI) Montessori programs showed significantly greater school-year gains on outcome measures of executive function, reading, math, vocabulary, and social problem-solving than children in lower fidelity Montessori programs or conventional classrooms.

Google Honors Maria Montessori

On August 31, in honor of Maria Montessori’s 142d birthday, the Google homepage displayed the Google logo composed of Montessori classroom materials.  Clicking on the logo took viewers to a large selection of informational articles about Montessori.  Montessori education is close to the hearts of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who both attended Montessori schools as children.  Watch this excerpt (the link in the heading) from a 2004 interview with Barbara Walters, in which they credited their Montessori education as a major factor contributing to their success, saying that Montessori allowed them to learn to think for themselves, taught them to be self-directed and self-starters, and gave them freedom to pursue their interests.

Tummy time is vital for children's development

Montessori guides and parents know that movement is linked to cognition, and that it enhances thinking and learning.  But did you know that babies who spend too much time in "containers" (like infant carriers, car seats, infant swings, and walkers) and not enough time on their tummies can experience developmental problems in other areas, too?  Spending time on the tummy establishes the upper body strength that babies will use for the rest of their lives to do things like read and write, hold scissors properly, and climb a jungle gym.  It also supports the development of the neck, which is important for the proper development of speech, eating, and even focusing the eyes.

Early learning about spatial relationships boosts understanding of numbers

Scientific research now validates what Montessorians have always known -- working with the pink tower and brown stair is much more than just "playing with blocks." Recent studies from the University of Chicago have shown that early opportunities in spatial learning contribute to children's ability to mentally manipulate objects and understand spatial relationships. Also, children who are skilled in understanding how shapes fit together have an advantage when it comes to geometry, math, and other skills important in Science Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields, such as reading maps and graphs and understanding diagrams.

Education Experts Support a New Vision for Homework

Montessori parents know that addressing the whole child (emotional, social, and physical needs as well as cognitive needs) is the best way to support optimal development.  Now mainstream education is getting the message, too.  Education experts recently presented new Healthy Homework Guidelines to the National PTA, calling attention to the ineffectiveness of assigning homework to young children, and the toll that homework takes on healthy family life.  Alfie Kohn, author of Unconditional Parenting, Punished by Rewards, The Homework Myth, and other books and articles on human behavior, education, and parenting, calls homework "the greatest single extinguisher of children's curiosity that we have ever invented . . . no research has ever found any benefit to assigning homework before kids are in high school."

Being a Montessori child is a gift for life 

Whose Children Will Get the Best Jobs in the 21st Century?